Biz Break: President Obama gets into VR with new White House tour

Share this:

President Barack Obama and his daughter Sasha Obama walks towards Marine One helicopter prior to their departure from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, for the short trip to nearby Andrews Air Force Base, Friday, Dec. 16, 2016. The President and First Lady Michelle Obama have given a video tour of the White House using Facebook 360 and Oculus virtual reality technology.

And if You’ll Look Over Here …: President Obama is just one week away from leaving office and, well, being unemployed.

Of course, as a former president, Obama will have no problem getting hired doing anything else he wants to do. Whether he writes his memoirs, sets up a foundation, becomes Chief Justice of the United States (Look up William Howard Taft, for example) or just making speeches for six figures a pop, President Obama is going to have opportunities to keep himself busy. He’s only 55, after all.

So, after eight years of having the most-stressful job on the planet, the president might want to do something that’s a little less intense than ministering to the demands and needs of almost 325 million people. Like being a tour guide at a museum. After all, he has some experience with that, based on a new video released by the White House on Friday.

With a little help from Facebook and its Oculus virtual reality headset business, the President and First Lady Michelle Obama have put out a 360-degree video called “The People’s House: Inside The White House With Barack And Michelle Obama.” The video is initially being released as an eight-minute-long short film and can be viewed online in a Facebook 360 experience, or in VR using an Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR headset. A 20-minute-long version of the film will be released after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

In the video, President Obama shows off the Oval Office, Michelle Obama gives a tour of the family dining room, and they both narrate descriptions and histories of nine rooms in the White House West Wing, including some areas that have rarely been made open to the public. The longer version of the film will be more expansive and include twice as many room as the video currently available.

So, maybe after a short break, the president will head back to his hometown and volunteer as a docent at the Art Institute of Chicago or city’s Field Museum? After eight years in the White House and showing it off in VR, it would be hard to knock on Obama’s tour guide experience.

Twitter said it will partner with the PBS NewsHour to livestream the inauguration of Donald Trump and Mike Pence as president and vice president, with coverage beginning at 8 a.m. and running until 2 p.m. The programming will be anchored by by Newshour managing editor Judy Woodruff, while NewsHour correspondents John Yang will report from the U.S. Capitol and Lisa Desjardins from the National Mall.

With his propensity for tweeting, and challenging the media, we may even get some coverage commentary later on Inauguration Day from President Trump, himself.

Pandora’s Box Opens: Pandora Media shares climbed 6.3 percent Friday to close at $12.76 after the Oakland-based internet radio company said it would cut 7 percent of its workforce, or about 155 jobs, as it works to reduce operational expenses. Pandora also said it expects its fourth-quarter revenue to be higher than its prior estimates of $362 million to $374 million. Pandora attributed the upbeat revenue forecast to strong levels of new paid subscribers.

Bottom of the Lineup:

Here’s a look at how some leading Silicon Valley stocks did Friday…

Movin’ on Up: In addition to Pandora, gains came from Sigma Designs, Silver Spring Networks, Form Factor, Harmonic and FireEye.

In the Red: Decliners included QuinStreet, Advanced Micro Devices, 8×8, Zynga and Finisar.

The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.5 percent to 5,574.12.

The blue chip Dow Jones industrial average slipped by less than 0.1 percent to end the week at 19,885.73.

And the broad-based Standard & Poor’s 500 Index edged up by 0.2 percent to 2,274.64.

Rex Crum is the senior web editor for the business section for The Mercury News and Bay Area News Group. He also writes about business and technology for the publications' print and web editions, and has covered business and technology for nearly two decades. A native of Seattle, he remains a diehard Seahawks and Mariners fan and is imparting his fandom to his Oakland-native wife and two young daughters.

Sunday July 3, 1983, was an exciting day for me. I picked up a copy of the Los Angeles Times and there, in the business section, was my very first column about personal computers. I remember calling up a friend and telling him I had good news and bad news. The good news was that I just signed-up to write...